At last the day came when the sympathy of which Mr. Gladstone had so often assured Lord Shaftesbury and myself, was to be put to the simplest test. Mr. Reid (now Sir Robert Reid) was to introduce our Bill for the Prohibition of Vivisection into Parliament (April 4th, 1883). I wrote to Mr. Gladstone a short note imploring him to lift his hand to help us; and if it were impossible for him to speak in the House in our favour, at least to let his friends know that he wished well to our Bill. I do not remember the words of that note. I know that it was a cry from my very heart to the man who held it in his power to save the poor brutes from their tortures for ever; to do what I was spending my life’s last years in vainly trying to accomplish.
He received the note; I had a formal acknowledgment of it. But Mr. Gladstone did nothing. He left us to the tender mercies of Sir William Harcourt, whose audacious (and mendacious) contradiction of Mr. George Russell, our seconder, I have detailed elsewhere.[[23]] From that day I never met, nor ever desired to meet, Mr. Gladstone again.
A friend whom I greatly admired and valued, and whose intercourse I enjoyed during all my residence in London, from first to last, was Mr. Froude. He died just after the first edition of this book (of which I had of course sent him a copy) was published; and I was told it supplied welcome amusement to him in his last days.
The world, I think, has never done quite justice to Mr. Froude; albeit, when he was gone the newspapers spoke of him as “the last of the giants.” He always seemed to me to belong to the loftier race, of whom there were then not a few living; and though his unhappy Nemesis of Faith (for which I make no defence whatever) and his Carlyle drew on him endless blame, and his splendid History equally endless cavil and criticism, his greatness was to my apprehension something apart from his books. His Essays,—especially the magnificent one on Job—give, I think, a better idea of the man than was derivable from any other source, except personal intimacy. “He touched nothing which he did not” enlarge, if not “adorn.” Subjects expanded when talked of easily, and even lightly, with him. There was a background of space always above and behind him. Though he had no little cause for it, he was not bitter. I never saw him angry or heard him express resentment, except once when his benevolent efforts had failed to obtain from Mr. Gladstone’s Government a pension for a poverty-stricken, meritorious woman of letters, while far less deserving persons received the bounty. But when he let the Marah waters of Mr. Carlyle’s private reflexions loose on the world their bitterness seemed to communicate itself to all the readers of the book. Even the silver pen of Mrs. Oliphant for once was dipped in gall; and it was she, if I mistake not, who in her wrath devised the ferocious adjective “Froudacious” to convey her rage and scorn. As for myself, when that book appeared I frankly told Mr. Froude that I rejoiced, because I had always deprecated Mr. Carlyle’s influence, and I thought this revelation of him would do much to destroy it. Mr. Froude laughed good-humouredly, but naturally showed a little consternation. His sentiment about the Saturday Reviewers, who at that time buzzed round his writings and stung him every week, was much that of a St. Bernard or a Newfoundland towards a pack of snarling terriers. One day a clergyman very well known in London, wrote to me after one of our little parties to beg that I would do him the favour, when next Mr. Froude was coming to me, to invite him also, and permit him to bring his particular friend Mr. X, who greatly desired to meet his brother historian. I was very willing to oblige the clergyman in question, and before long we had a gathering at our house of forty or fifty people, among whom were Mr. Froude and Mr. X. I knew that the moment for the introduction had arrived, but of course I was not going to take the liberty of presenting any stranger to Mr. Froude without asking his consent. That consent was not so readily granted as I had anticipated. “Who? Mr. X? Let me look at him first.” “There he is,” I said, pointing to a small figure half hidden in a group of ladies and gentlemen. “That is he, is it?” said Mr. Froude. “Oh, No! No! Don’t introduce him to me. He has the Saturday Review written all over his face!” There was nothing to do but to laugh, and presently, when my clerical friend came up and urged me to fulfil my promise and make the introduction, to hurry down on some excuse into the tea room and never reappear till the disappointed Mr. X had departed.
I have kept 34 letters received from Mr. Froude during the years in which I had the good fortune to contribute to Fraser’s Magazine when he was the Editor, and later, when, as friends and neighbours in South Kensington, we had the usual little interchange of message and invitations. Among these, to me precious, letters there are some passages which I shall venture to copy, assured that his representatives cannot possibly object to my doing so. I may first as an introduction of myself, quote one in a letter to my eldest brother, who had invited him to stay at Newbridge during one of his visits to Ireland. Mr. Froude wrote to him:—
“I knew your brother Henry intimately 30 years ago, and your sister is one of the most valued friends of my later life.”
His affection for Carlyle spoke in this eager refutation of some idle story in the newspapers:
“February 16th.
“There is hardly a single word in it which is not untrue. Ruskin is as much attached to Mr. Carlyle as ever. There is not one of his friends to whom he is not growing dearer as he approaches the end of his time, nor has the wonderful beauty and noble tenderness of his character been ever more conspicuous. The only difference visible in him from what he was in past years is that his wife’s death has broken his heart. He is gentler and more forbearing to human weakness. He feels that his own work is finished, and he is waiting hopefully till it please God to take him away.”